Miscellaneous

To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death. – Jean Anouilh, Antigone, 1942

The chief characteristics of the [liberal] attitude are human sympathy, a receptivity to change, and a scientific willingness to follow reason rather than faith. – Chester Bowles, New Republic, 22 July 1946

Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established. – Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 1888

The thing I am most aware of is my limits. And this is natural; for I never, or almost never, occupy the middle of my cage; my whole being surges toward the bars. РAndr̩ Gide, Journals, 4 August 1930

Loyalty in a free society depends upon the toleration of disloyalty. – Alan Barth, The Loyalty of Free Man, 1951

His designs were strictly honorable, as the phrase is: that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage. – Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, 1749

The absurd is clear reason recognizing its limits. – Albert Camus, Le Suicide philosophique

The world more often rewards the appearance of merit than merit itself. – La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 1665

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking to it that one overcomes it; often it is by working on the one next to it. Some things and some people have to be approached obliquely, at an angle. РAndr̩ Gide, Journals, 26 October 1924

The professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling. – H.G. Wells, The Outline of History, 1920

It is not reason that gives us our moral orientation, it is sensitivity. РMaurice Barre̬s, La Grande Piti̩ des ̩glises de France, 1914

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1834

I identify more with people who ask each day for divine guidance than people equipped with a divine guidance system. – Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com

Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows what he wants, while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. – Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941

[A] morning-land full of immeasurable hopes encircled him; he stripped his breast, threw himself all aglow into the dripping grass, washed (but not with any higher purpose than girls have) his firm face with liquid June-snow… – Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Hesperus, or Forty-Five Dog-Post-Days: A Biography,

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What a pity that the only way to heaven is in a hearse. – Stanislaw J. Lec